“I played in it when it was the Pac-8, coached in it when it was the Pac-10 and broadcast in it when it was the Pac-12,” Kent, 59, said in a phone interview. “That shows my age, but it also shows I’ve been around the development of one of the top conferences in the country.”

But that doesn’t make the Pac-12 Kent’s home.

“I would never want to say that,” the former Rockford West All-American said a week after turning in his microphone to become Washington State’s new coach. “I love the beauty of the Northwest, the trees, the mountains, the fresh air. But home is home and it always will be. I fully expect I will be back in the Rockford area recruiting. Wichita State got one great player there in (Auburn’s Fred) Van Vleet. ... Hopefully, I can get them to go a little farther west.”

Kent earned his Pac-10 fame at Oregon, first as a player on Dick Harter’s “Kamikaze Kids” teams that upset No. 1-ranked UCLA in 1974 and twice won 20 games, then as Oregon’s all-time winningest coach from 1998-2010. In 2002, when he led the Ducks to the Elite Eight, he won the first NCAA Tournament game at Oregon in 42 years. Five years later, he led Oregon back to the Elite Eight.

Kent said he will have no conflicting emotions when he leads his Washington State team into Oregon’s $200 million Matthew Knight Arena, the most expensive on-campus arena in the nation.

“No, not at all,” Kent said. “Look at all the realignment that’s been going on in college athletics and the 100 years of tradition that is being ripped apart. Your allegiances aren’t a factor anymore.

“It’s about building your programs and believing in your product that you are trying to sell to your community. Will it be weird standing in that arena? Well, I’ve never coached in that arena. But it will be enjoyable coaching in the arena you know you helped build.”

Kent (325-254, including 235-174 at Oregon) has a lot of work to do taking over a Washington State program that has had a winning record in the Pac-12 only twice in the last 19 years, both under Tony Bennett, who led Virginia to a No. 1 NCAA seed this year. The Cougars are 14-40 in the Pac-12 the last three seasons and have reached the NCAA tournament only three times in 31 years.

Kent, hired by the same athletic director who hired him at Oregon (Bill Moos), says he wants to take his Washington State team to Oregon’s state-of-the-art arena, just as he once brought St. Mary’s, where he got his coaching start, up to Oregon.

Page 2 of 2 - “It will be neat to see Washington State down at Oregon so they can understand that’s where I want to take Washington State,” Kent said. “Dream big. Think big.

“At one point, people said we couldn’t do that at Oregon. They said, ‘What are you doing? You can’t win there. They’ve never won there.’ But we did everything we said we were going to do there except go to a Final Four and open a new arena, which was being built while we were there.

“It shouldn’t take us as long to win at Washington State as it took us at Oregon.”